Monthly Budget Wrap-Up 3

I went to look back through our statements to find out where the money went this month, and it turns out I have absolutely no idea.

Thankfully our plans to pay our line of credit, mortgage, etc. have been automated. So we did fine in that regard. And we didn’t use our credit cards. But any extra cash I had after purchasing the MacBook, as well as an undetermined amount of change from our change jar just sortof… evaporated.

Biggest Win: Managing to pay the amounts planned on our line of credit account.

Biggest Fail: Losing track of where our money was going. We certainly didn’t do anything fancy or exciting with it, since we realized on the last weekend of the month that we’d run out of cash and had to adjust some plans. But other than realizing where “the end” was, we don’t have much of an idea about where any of the money went.

Numbers this month:

Debt paid down in March: $2900.00

Amount left to go: $16004.88

Discretionary spending for the month: no idea. More than $1000… not much more, but no idea how much. Oh, plus the fancy new MacBook for about $1500

Lessons Learned: The biggest bummer about “losing” the extra money we had is that one is not having put anything extra toward our debt. If we’d have stuck to our variable spending budget we would’ve been able to pay down our account those few hundred dollars more.

So we’re back to writing everything down, and hoping that paying more careful attention to the budget in April makes sure we’re back on track.

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Jen Watkiss

3 thoughts on “Monthly Budget Wrap-Up 3”

This is one of the biggest problems I have with the cash in my wallet which is tips from my clients. I use it as my food and entertainment budget (and right now also paying for physiotherapy. Want to guess what’s happened to buying groceries or going out? Uhg.) and it’s really not uncommon for me to open my wallet and swear up and down that I had more cash in there because I don’t always remember that I maybe spent $5 here or $5 there. It’s not so much that $5 here or there is that much, but do it six or seven times and all of a sudden the fund looks very small indeed!

I may start writing things down on a post-it and sticking it inside my wallet when I spend smaller amounts of money on things as a reminder.

I know the cash-in-jars system works well for some people, but this is exactly why we don’t do it. We put EVERYTHING on a credit card (including really small stuff). This means that every month we get a list of what we’ve spent – no need to write anything down. It also tends to prevent us from spending the $5 here and there because never actually have cash (which, yes, can be a pain when you just need a toonie). And the bonus is the points! Tons of free groceries (like more than $500/year easily). The trick, of course, is to make sure that you’re disciplined enough not to overspend, and to pay the entire thing off each month, which is where I guess the cash system is probably better, but we’ve done okay with that.

@Nicole-Funny, we are the exact opposite! We’re completely incapable of not using plastic if it’s available, and will routinely talk ourselves into $5 here and there. I put $1.73 on my debit card last month because it was one of *those* mornings, and I really wanted a coffee.